Saint in New York (27 page)

He moved slightly, as if to help Joe with his
unbuttoning.
Then, with a lightning movement, his left hand shot up.
Lean
fingers closed on Joe’s left wrist as he fumbled with the Saint’s
shirt, and
a sudden whipping contraction of steel sinews
jerked the man aside,
throwing him off balance and turning
him half round on the leverage of his
extended arm. The gun
in his right hand was flung out of aim: Simon
heard the crack
of the explosion and saw the vicious splash of flame from
the
barrel, but the shot went off at right angles to the line it should
have
taken.

Simon’s fist snapped over and thudded into
the back of the
gunman’s neck, accurately at the base of his skull,
smacking
into the hard flesh and bone in a savage punch that must
have
almost jarred the bones loose from their sockets. The man
grunted
stupidly and lurched forward; but the Saint’s left arm
lashed round his
upper body and held him up as a human
shield, while his right hand grabbed at
the man’s gun wrist and
held it to prevent Joe twisting it up behind
his back and firing
at point-blank range. He had had no time to wonder what
Maxie
might be doing during that flurry of hectic action;
when the Saint had
last observed him he had been three yards away and a trifle to his left; but
the first jerk which had hurled
Joe across the line of fire had made that
position useless. Simon looked for him over Joe’s shoulder and did not see him.
He hauled his living shield round in a frantic spin; and then
he heard
the deafening peal of an automatic exploding some
where close behind
him on his right, and something hit him in
the right side of his
back below the shoulder with terrific force.

The Saint stumbled and caught his breath as a
redhot an
guish stabbed through him from the point of impact of
that
fearful blow; and at the same moment Joe’s body kicked con
vulsively
in his. grasp and became a dead weight. Simon’s right
arm was numb to his
fingertips from the shock. He turned fur
ther, dragging Joe
with him, and heard a dull bump as the
dead man’s automatic
slipped from his nerveless fingers and fell to the ground, but he could not
reach it. To have tried to
do so, with one arm useless, would have meant
letting go his
only protection; and he knew he would never have had time
to cover
the distance and locate the fallen weapon in the dark.
He looked up and saw
Maxie’s pitiless face, a white blotch
in the faint light.

“You got two minutes to say your prayers,
Saint,” Maxie
grated, with the first trace of vindictiveness that he
had shown.
He tilted his head and spoke louder.

“Hi, Hunk, you damn fool! Where are
ya?”

Then Simon remembered the driver of the car
and knew
that the chance which he thought he had seen was only a
chi
mera, a last sadistic jest on the part of the fortune which had
deserted
him. Between them, the two men would get him
easily. He couldn’t
watch both at once, or protect himself
from the two of them
together. One of them would outflank
him, as simply as walking round a
table, without risk and with
out effort; and that would be the finish.

The Saint did not pray. He had no deities to
call on, except the primitive pagan gods of battle and sudden death who had
carried him on a flood tide of favour into that blind alley and
left him
there to pay the last account alone. But he looked up
at the dark sky and
saw that the clouds had broken, and a star
twinkled millions of
miles aloft in the blue rift. A light breeze
passed across the
common, stirring the fresh scents of the
night; and he knew
that, whatever the reckoning might be, he
would have asked for
no other life.

“Hunk!” Maxie called again,
raspingly.

He dared not turn his head for fear of taking
his eyes off the
Saint; but the Saint looked beyond him and saw a strange
thing.

The driver was not probing into the vitals of
the car, as he had been. He was not even approaching at a lumbering trot to
throw his taciturn weight into the unequal scale. It took the
Saint a
second or two to discover where he was—a second or
two longer to realize
that the blurred form extended at full
length beside the car
was the driver, lying as if in sleep.

And then he saw something else—a slender,
graceful figure
that was coming up behind Maxie on soundless feet. And as
he
saw it, she
spoke.

“The Big Fellow says wait a minute,
Maxie.”

Maxie’s eyes went wide in hurt surprise, and
his jaw sagged
foolishly. Only the aim of his automatic did not waver.
It
clung to its mark as if his brain stubbornly refused to accept
the
evidence of his ears; and his astounded gaze did not shift
away from the Saint.

“Wha—whass that?” he got out.

“This is Fay,” said the girl.

Simon Templar opened his nostrils to a vast
lung-easing breath. The cool sweet air of the unwalled fields went down into
his lungs like ethereal nectar and sent the blood racing again along his
stagnant veins. He lifted his head and looked
up at the lone twinkling
star in that slim gap in the black
canopy of cloud, and over the abyss of
a thousand million
light-years
the star seemed to wink at him. He was alive.

There are no words to describe what he felt
at that moment.
When a man has been down into the uttermost depths, when
the shadow
of the dark angel’s wings has blotted out the last
light and their cold
breath has touched his brow, not in sud
den accident or the
anaesthetic heat of passion, but with a re-
morseless deliberation
that wrings the last dram of self-control
from every second of hopeless knowledge,
his return to life is
beyond the reach of
words. To say that the weight of all mor
tality is swept from his shoulders, that the snapping of the
strain leaves every heroically disciplined nerve
loose and inert
like a broken thread,
that the precious response of every
living
sense takes away his breath with its intolerably brilliant beauty, is to say
nothing. He is like a man who has been blind
from birth, to whom the gift of sight has been given in the middle of his
life; but he is far more than that. He has been
dumb and deaf, without taste or smell or hearing, without
mind or movement; and all those things have been
given to
him at the same time.

As in a dream, the Saint heard Maxie’s blank
bewildered
voice again.

“How did you get here?”

“I walked,” said the girl coldly.
“Did you hear what I told
you? The Big Fellow says to lay off
him.”

“But—but——” Maxie was floundering in
a bottomless mo
rass of incredulity that had taken the feet from under
him.
“But he killed Joe,” he managed, in a sudden gasp.

The girl had advanced coolly until she was at
his side. She
gazed across at the limp form gripped in the Saint’s left
arm.

“Well?”

The monosyllable dropped from her lips with a
pellucid
serenity that was void of the faintest tinge of interest
She did
not care what had happened to Joe. She was at a loss to find any
connection whatsoever between his death and the object
of her arrival. Maxie
struggled for speech.

And the Saint realized that Joe’s automatic
was still on the
ground close by, where it had fallen.

His arm was beginning to ache with the dead
weight on it,
and he heaved the body up and got a fresh grip while his
keen eyes probed the darkness. There was a throbbing pain growing
up in his
wound that turned to a sharp twinge in his chest
every time he
breathed, but he scarcely noticed the discomfort
Presently he found a
dull gleam of metal in the grass some
where to his left front.

He edged himself towards it, inch by inch,
with infinite patience. Every instinct urged him to drop his encumbering load
and make a
swift, desperate dive for it, but he knew that the
gamble would have
been hopelessly against him. With every
muscle held relentlessly in check, he
worked himself across the
intervening space
with movements so smooth and minute
that
they could never have been noticed. There was only about
a yard and a half to go, but it might have been
seven miles.
And at last Maxie recovered his voice.

“What does the Big Fellow want us to
do?” he demanded
harshly. “Kiss him?”

“The Big Fellow says to let him go.”

The dull gleam of metal was only six inches
away then. Si
mon extended a cautious toe, touched it here and there,
drew
it gently towards him. It was the gun he was looking for. His
right arm
was still useless; but if he could drop Joe and dive
for it with his
left—the instant Maxie’s attention was dis
tracted, as it must
be soon… .

“Let him go?” Maxie’s eyes were
wild, his mouth twisted.
“Like hell I’ll let him go! You must be
nuts. He killed Joe.” Maxie’s forearm stiffened, and the gun in his hand
moved
slightly. “You’re too late, Fay—we’d done the job before you
got here.
This is how we let him go, the dirty double-crossing ——”

“Don’t be a fool!”

In a flash the girl’s hands were on his
wrist, dragging his arm
down; and in that moment the Saint had his
chance. With a
swift jerk of his sound shoulder he flung the body of his
shield
away, well away to one side, and his hand plunged downwards
to the
automatic that he was still marking with his toe. His
fingers closed on the
butt, and he straightened up again with
it in his hand.

“I think that’s pretty good advice,
Maxie,” he said gently.

There was a trace of the old Saintly lilt in
his voice, a lilt of
triumphant mockery that was born in the surge
of new power
and confidence which went through him at the feel of gun
metal in
his hands again. Maxie stared at him frozenly, with
his right arm still
stretched downwards in the girl’s grasp, and
the muzzle of his
automatic pointed uselessly into the ground. Simon’s finger itched on the
trigger. He had sworn to be with
out mercy. The indifference of his
executioners had hardened
the last dregs of pity out of his heart.

“Wasn’t it two minutes that we had to
say our prayers,
Maxie?”
he whispered.

The gunman glared at him with dilated eyes.
All at once, in
a physical quiver of comprehension, he seemed to take in
the
situation—that the Saint was alive and free and the tables were turned.
With a foul oath, heedless of the menace of the Saint’s
automatic,
he broke loose from the girl with a savage fling of his arm and brought up his
gun.

Simon’s forefinger tightened on the
trigger—once. Maxie’s
gun was never fired. His arms flew wide, and
his head snapped
back. For one swaying moment he stared at the Saint with
all
the furies of hell concentrated in his flaming eyes; and then a
dull glaze
crept over his eyeballs and the fires died out. His
head sagged forward
as if he were tired; his knees buckled, and
he pitched headlong
to the ground.

Simon gazed down at the two sprawled figures
for a second
or two in silence, while the jagged ice melted out of his
eyes
without softening their expression. A faint gesture of repugnance
crinkled a thin line into one corner of his mouth; but
whether the
repugnance was for the two departed killers, or for the manner in which they
had been exterminated, he did
not know himself. He dismissed the proposition
with a shrug, and the careless movement sent a sharp twinge of pain through
his
injured shoulder to bring him finally back to reality. With
an
inaudible sigh, he put the gun away in his pocket and
turned his eyes back
to the girl.